"Vicious circle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... conviction that, in the event of the War lasting on into 1920, there is every prospect of establishing an elementary co-ordination between the various Government departments. Meanwhile they ask me to correct a confusion in the public mind by which the "Vicious Circle" is regarded as a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Dec. 5, 1917 • Various
... canister in the corner. "Somewhere, somehow, the world had missed the boat. Those wars didn't solve anything, they didn't even make a very strong pretense. They just made things worse. Somewhere, human society had gotten into a trap, a vicious circle. It had reached the end of its progressive tether, it had no place to go, no place to expand, to great common goal. So ideologies arose to try to solve the dilemma of a basically static society, and they fought wars. And they reached a point, finally, ...
— Bear Trap • Alan Edward Nourse
... in the best possible light (it is only human) and for this reason often carry our friends to places we cannot afford. This imposes upon them the necessity of returning the dinner in kind, and the vicious circle swings around, each person in it grinding his teeth with rage but not able to find his way out. Entertaining is all right so long as it is a useful adjunct to business, but when it becomes a burden in itself it is time ...
— The Book of Business Etiquette • Nella Henney
... economy. This has been accomplished by bringing our domestic and foreign relations more and more under a reign of law. A rule of force has been giving way to a rule of reason. We have substituted for the vicious circle of increasing expenditures, increasing tax rates, and diminishing profits the charmed circle of diminishing expenditures, diminishing tax ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... But as time went on, and she learned the full wickedness of the thing, her days became one long waiting. She saw one move after another succeed, strike after strike slowing production, and thus increasing the cost of living. She saw the growing discontent and muttering, the vicious circle of labor striking for more money, and by its own ceasing of activity making the very increases they asked inadequate. And behind it all she saw the ceaseless working, the endless sowing, of ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... form and voice, and other identifications dispelled the mist of the mistake; and it came out as clear as day that I had followed the direction of my host, to bear to the left, far too liberally, and that I had been walking at my best speed in a "vicious circle" for full two hours and a half, and had landed just where I commenced, at least within the breadth of a narrow street ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... both right. The country is unhealthy because it is uncultivated, and uncultivated because it is unhealthy. The question lies in a vicious circle, from which there is no escape. Let us therefore leave things as they are; and when the fever-season arrives, we can go and inhale the fresh mountain air under the tall ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About
... men are made!" Especially wretched young men; and the wretcheder one is, the more one smokes; and the more one smokes, the wretcheder one gets—a vicious circle! ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... vicious circle the advocates of a verbal inspiration of infallibility are necessarily imprisoned whenever they attempt to argue from the words of Scripture. They contend that one must believe their theory in order to be sure that any passage is absolutely true, and then they ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... of the esophagus are by no means an uncommon accompaniment of the stagnation of food and secretions. From the irritation they produce, spastic stenosis may occur, thus constituting a vicious circle; the spasm of the esophagus increases the stagnation which in turn results in further inflammation and ultimate ulceration. Healing of such ulcers may result in cicatricial contraction and organic ...
— Bronchoscopy and Esophagoscopy - A Manual of Peroral Endoscopy and Laryngeal Surgery • Chevalier Jackson
... utilises the fossils in his attempt to work out the order of the strata when these have been much disarranged. For the simpler fossil forms of any type must be older than those that are more complex. There is no vicious circle here, for the general succession of strata is clear, and it is quite certain that there were fishes before there were amphibians, and amphibians before there were reptiles, and reptiles before there were birds and mammals. In certain cases, e.g. ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... absolute in its jurisdiction over the state, and solely responsible to itself as to what the limit of that jurisdiction shall be. It calls itself supreme and absolute, because infallible—infallible because divine. Thus the vicious circle is complete. Now entire obedience necessarily comes into collision with every species of freedom—nay, it is in itself antagonistic to freedom—freedom of thought, freedom of action—specially antagonistic ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot
... manner the history of Russia's internal misrule and disorder has continued to repeat itself for the last sixty years, revolving in the same vicious circle of fierce repression and persecution and utter disregard of the rights of individuals, followed by fierce reprisals on the part of the persecuted; the voice of protest no sooner raised than silenced in a prison cell or among Siberian snow-fields, yet ...
— The Forged Coupon and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... on its usefulness to satisfy yourself of its being virtuous; but, on the contrary, you rely on its virtuousness, previously ascertained, in order to satisfy yourself of its usefulness. And thus the whole practical value of this test disappears, though in that view it was first introduced; and a vicious circle arises in the argument; as you must have ascertained the virtuousness of an act, in order to apply the test of its being virtuous. But, secondly, it now comes out that Paley was answering a very different ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... desire it is drawn from them. But to reason from such value to the origin of our endowment, to argue that our senses must have been given to us by a deity because we prize them, is evidently to move round and round in a vicious circle. ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... seems that in his reply to the Emperor he undertook to disarm if the latter would take back to France all the troops he had in Germany, which Napoleon was unwilling to do until Prussia had disarmed. So we were in a vicious circle which could be ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... effort, generation after generation, through long ages, to repair the mischief inflicted by enemies," that accounts for "the fecundity of the codfish and other creatures. The more prolific it becomes, the more enemies it can feed; and the more they multiply, the more prolific it grows." A vicious circle indeed! Even "earthquakes, storms, droughts, deluges," are explained as due to a certain want of balance and ...
— God and the World - A Survey of Thought • Arthur W. Robinson
... thousands, from the king downwards, who in soul and conscience loathed it. They were to drink of the same cup—Episcopacy was to be forced on them by fines and imprisonments. Scotland, her people and rulers were moving in a vicious circle. The Resolutioners admitted that to allow the Protesters to have any hand in affairs was "to breed continual distemper and disorders," and Baillie was for banishing the leaders of the Protesters, irreconcilables ...
— A Short History of Scotland • Andrew Lang
... another remark: naturalists continually assert that no important organ varies; but in saying this they unconsciously argue in a vicious circle; for if an organ, let it be what it may, is highly variable, it is regarded as unimportant, and under a systematic point of view this is quite correct. But as long as constancy is thus taken as the criterion of importance, it will indeed be long before an important organ ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... exactions, and the inferior mandarins, in order to be left undisturbed, will offer them presents. The emperor will be told that all is well, while everything is really wrong, and while the poor people are being oppressed." And so the vicious circle has gone on to the present day, with serious injury to the state and the people. When Keen Lung had the chance of bringing matters under his own personal control he did not hesitate to exercise his ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... gradual restoration of order by the people themselves, into democracy. And then in time again, by that steady gravitation of the strong up and the weak down, some one man who emerged from the mass and crowned himself, or was crowned. And there was autocracy again, and again the vicious circle. ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... and the effect of stimuli upon human organisms, the circle is like this: Frequent executions dull the sensibilities toward the taking of life. This makes it easier for men to kill and increases murders, which in turn increase hangings, which in turn increase murders, and so on, around the vicious circle. ...
— Crime: Its Cause and Treatment • Clarence Darrow
... the attitude of all the leading countries plainly indicate their recognition of the fact that the action and reaction of excessive income taxation create a vicious circle from which the governments of all belligerent nations even ...
— War Taxation - Some Comments and Letters • Otto H. Kahn
... that this was not a Russian but a Serbian interest, whereupon M. Sazonof claimed that Russian interests were in this case Serbian interests, so that I was obliged to make an end of the vicious circle by going on to ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... and the brute is that man may be called a thinking animal, the brute, however, is no thinking man. It is this that a large portion of our Darwinians can not, in their one-sidedness, understand. Hence the vicious circle in which ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... a vicious circle in our previous reasoning! Theoretical culture must it seems bring along with it practical culture, and yet the latter must be the condition of the former. All improvement in the political sphere must proceed from the ennobling ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... have succeeded him have observed that, labor being itself an object of valuation, a species of merchandise indeed like any other, to take it as the principal and efficient cause of value is to reason in a vicious circle. Therefore, they conclude, it is necessary to fall back ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... me—your cursed incredulity is infectious. I don't put my case well, because I know in advance it's discredited, and I almost end by not believing it myself. That's why I can't convince you. It's a vicious circle." He laid a hand on Denver's arm. "Send a stenographer, and put my statement ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... they confer, we will confer: what they infer, we will infer. Are you agreed? Out with it and say so, please. Not bit of it, he says, unless they expound rightly. What is this "rightly"? At your discretion. Are you not ashamed of the vicious circle? ...
— Ten Reasons Proposed to His Adversaries for Disputation in the Name • Edmund Campion
... our whole training is adopted for conditions which in future campaigns can only arise exceptionally, whilst it practically ignores the true sphere of action of the Cavalry, we are working in a vicious circle of forms and misrepresentations which belong to an extinct era of Warfare, and which have long since ceased to have any but the smallest connection with the facts ...
— Cavalry in Future Wars • Frederick von Bernhardi |
